For over 100 years Pine Mountain has been focused on enriching lives and connecting people through Appalachian place-based education for all ages.
An in-depth digital look at the Pine Mountain Settlement School Archive. The collections
FULL INDEX TO COLLECTIONS
ABOUT THE ARCHIVE
OUR VISION
The Vision of the Pine Mountain Settlement School Archive is to provide a voice that will encourage transformations in our relationship to the cultures of the Appalachian region through access to a unique and extensive body of material about a rural settlement school within the region. The rural settlement school movement and its impact on the people of Eastern Kentucky and the Southern Appalachians is a story that has sometimes been misrepresented, romanticized, or only partially understood. We envision an accessible, deep, vibrant and vital resource that will encourage exploration and collaborative dialogue about the hidden and sometimes contested history of rural settlement schools. We envision a broader dissemination of research materials across all public, private, and federal sectors interested in Southern Appalachian cultures and life. more …
OUR ARCHIVAL MISSION
The Pine Mountain Settlement School archival mission supports the institutional mission and strategic planning goals. Our institutional mission continues a long 105-year history of multiple educational and social enrichment programs centered on the local community and beyond. Once a boarding school with a progressive educational curriculum, Pine Mountain School’s recent educational programming has moved away from residential education to multi-faceted offerings of short-term environmental, cultural, medical, social, agricultural, and art and craft programs and workshops. But, the archive has not moved away from, nor will it move away from, a commitment to Pine Mountain as place and people. more …
To access the Archive go to INDEX TO ARCHIVAL COLLECTIONS (also at the top of the page).
Go to PINE MOUNTAIN SETTLEMENT SCHOOL MAIN PAGE to learn more about the School’s current workshops, community interaction, annual events and other activities. It is also where you can find information about donating to the School and visiting the campus.
WHAT’S NEW!
AUGUST 2019
In 1923, three men who shared a keen interest in the sites of prehistoric native peoples came to Pine Mountain Settlement School (PMSS) to excavate the Indian Cliff Dwelling on the School’s property. When the overhanging rock shelter, located across the road from the entrance to PMSS, was discovered by a student to have ancient bones, Co-Director Katherine Pettit quickly summoned William D. Funkhouser, a zoology professor at the University of Kentucky (UK), knowing of his interest in responsible and careful archaeological exploration. He, in turn, invited Dr. Arthur M. Miller, a UK geologist and Victor K. Dodge, a Lexington businessman, to join him in a systematic excavation.
Their endeavors were successful in finding skeletons, other bones, and artifacts, as he later described in a short summary in Ancient Life in Kentucky (The Kentucky Geological Survey, 1928), an influential work on Kentucky archaeology.
Impressed with the School’s students, mission and accomplishments, the men interacted with PMSS students, presenting talks on birds, snakes, the geology of Pine Mountain and other subjects related to their scientific specialties and taking the students on a bird walk.
The biographies of these three men have been recently published on the PMSS Collections website. You can read their stories here:
ARTHUR M. MILLER
VICTOR K. DODGE
WILLIAM D. FUNKHOUSER
For a history of the Indian Cliff Dwelling, go to INDIAN CLIFF DWELLING.
JULY 2019
DEAR FRIEND LETTER, 1911 (Hindman)
PROSPECTING PINE MOUNTAIN SETTLEMENT SCHOOL
“We were at once struck with its strategic position … Though we knew of no means of getting it, it seemed such an ideal location for a school that we “made believe” we could have most of the land in sight, though with hardly a glimmering hope of its actuality. We laid out “house seats” on the little low spurs projecting from the foot of the mountain, we planted crops and set out orchards in the bottom- land … We planned a reservoir on the mountainside to catch the waters of a splendid limestone branch that came down the mountains under the spruce pines. In short, we spent three hours playing at the impossible, making believe at something too good to be true. And then at sunset, we walked up the valley under young oaks rarely colored to the quaint old-fashioned home of Mr. and Mrs.William Creech [Uncle William and Aunt Sal] whose simple goodness and kindly courtesy were like an evening benediction.” more …
SEE WHAT’S NEW! ARCHIVE for older featured collections. For example: GUIDE TO FAMILIES IN PINE MOUNTAIN VALLEY COMMUNITY.
COMMENTS and CONTACT
Comments and feedback regarding the material on this website or on the institutional history are welcomed. Comments directly on the website are not enabled.
Please contact office@pinemountainsettlementschool.com or (606) 558-3571 with your inquiries and comments. We welcome your identification of people and activities on our site and, particularly, corrections to the record. Please see OUR PRIVACY POLICY and contact our office if you believe we have violated your rights to privacy.
PMSS ARCHIVE MISSION STATEMENT (extended)
ADMINISTRATIVE INFORMATION
ORAL HISTORY RELEASE AGREEMENT
ORAL HISTORY ASSOCIATION – PRINCIPLES AND BEST PRACTICES
USE AGREEMENT (Reproduction Request Form)
ABOUT OCR TEXT
Many of the texts included in this site have been automatically generated using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. In some cases, these texts have not been manually reviewed or corrected.
OCR enables searching of large quantities of full-text data, but it is not 100% accurate. The level of accuracy depends on the print quality of the original publication and its condition at the time of microfilming. Publications with poor quality paper, small print, mixed fonts, multiple column layouts or damaged pages may have poor OCR accuracy.
CITATION OF MATERIALS
Any PUBLIC use of material must properly cite Pine Mountain Settlement School in the following manner:
“[Identification of Item],” [Collection Name] [Series Number, if applicable]. [date], Pine Mountain Settlement School, Pine Mountain, KY. [date accessed]
STATEMENT REGARDING PRIVACY
The manuscript collections and archival records in the Pine Mountain Settlement School Collections may contain sensitive and/or confidential information derived from historical archives that may be protected under federal and state right to privacy laws and regulations. Researchers who wish to publish and users who may share material from the Pine Mountain Settlement School Collections are advised by this notice that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in some collections within the Pine Mountain Settlement School Collections without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g. may be a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy if facts concerning an individual’s private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person for which Pine Mountain Settlement School assumes no responsibility.
If you believe that your privacy rights have been invaded please notify the following.
office@
See INDEX TO COLLECTIONS for an overview of collections and series.